Page 47 of Love Undercover
He smirked when she didn’t finish. “Kidnapped you?”
“You keep correcting me, so I don’t know what to call it!” She flapped her hands in irritation, and his smile grew wider.
“I mean, if we want to be technical, we’ll call it that.” His smile disappeared, his brow drawing together in concern. “Do you feel like that’s what I did?”
It clearly bothered him if she did, so she took the time to consider the question seriously. It was a heavy certainty as she realized that she didn’t. She could see how he’d been protecting her. Especially after what she’d experienced just a short time ago. She shivered at what might have happened had he not forced her out of her apartment that day.
His attention on her face proved how much he cared about the answer, and he didn’t like whatever emotions flashed in her expression.
“No,” she finally said. “I don’t think that’s what you did.”
She wanted the tension to release from his shoulders, but they remained bunched. Maybe he didn’t believe her. Or maybe he still felt bad about it.
She squeezed his hand when he looked down. “If I really thought you’d kidnapped me, I wouldn’t have kissed you.” Probably.
He raised his eyes slowly, a little glimmer of hope in the facets of the green prisms. Jeez, that green was mesmerizing. And theway they morphed and changed was endlessly fascinating. She could get lost in them so easily. She had already.
“Since we’ve established that it wasn’t really a kidnapping,” he said grimly. “Maybe you’ll trust me with what we have to do next.”
18
Rage Dragon
“We have to leave. Santiago knows where we are, and he knows you mean something to me. He will be back.”
Alarm shot across Sadie’s face. Chase wouldn’t dare touch her again unless she explicitly asked him to, not after what had happened earlier, but he wanted to. He wanted to calm her nerves, do whatever he could to make her forget.
More than that, though, he wanted to wring that little lizard man’s neck. Watch the dull light snuff out of his beady eyes.
“Where will we go?” Her voice sounded so small, and it punched him in the gut. It took all his effort to keep breathing through it.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” he said on an exhale. “But we have time. Santiago is a slow mover when he’s on his own, and I’m positive Zimmerman doesn’t know about this little side mission.”
Even as his mind shifted through what he needed to do to figure their next steps out, the rage simmered under his skin. It writhed, stinging and active, calling for him to do something. It made it hard for him to concentrate.
He wouldn’t let Travers’s behavior slide when he came up against Santiago again. There would be no pretending aloofness or some other agenda. It stirred a determination in him to make this whole thing end—the crime ring, his undercover assignment, and that sniveling miscreant’s life. But first things first. . .
“Let’s finish breakfast, then I can get some things in motion.”
She nodded, worry creasing her brow as she chewed her lip.
Once he got her settled at the island in the kitchen with the cold eggs from earlier, he tried to focus on the details of getting them somewhere safe. But all he could think about was whether she was eating well, and if the color was coming back to her cheeks. She was starting to look more normal instead of like a whipped dog, which should have calmed the beckoning of his anger, the destruction it craved.
But just thinking about what had made her look that way threw fuel on the fire in his belly, and he had no choice anymore. He needed to do something to dispel the painful heat that blazed through him before he could even begin to plan their next steps.
He pushed away from the counter so suddenly, Sadie froze, her eyes flashing to him.
“I need to take care of something,” he muttered, heading for the door.
His heart pummeled his ribs as he sprinted down the porch steps and around to the back of the house. He just needed thirty minutes to tame the beast, though his eyes shot to the sky above the trees to check for the telltale dust that would alert him that someone was coming. It wasn’t likely anyone would. Santiago may have found his little hideout, but the man wasn’t stupidenough to come back in broad daylight. Chase would see him coming, and Santiago knew he wouldn’t get within an inch of the house again.
No, if Chase had to bet money, he’d put a hundred on the fact that Santiago wouldn’t be back until nightfall. An inkling of where they’d go started to form in his mind—another undercover agent in similar circles who could be a stopping point. But that would come later. With so much time between now and then, Chase would be putting him in danger just by contacting him. The safest option would be to show up unannounced, just in case.
Satisfied that they still had a window of time, he stripped off his shirt and leaped up to grip the pull-up bar in one smooth motion. But he pounded through fifty dips and lifts and couldn’t douse the raging fire.
It burned and burned, eating at his control.
So he dropped into push-ups, eyeing the rows of old tires, knowing that was his next step. But he realized he might have to go into the garage to pound the shit out of his punching bag instead.
